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“Modernin tekniikan ytimessä muhii tehostuminen itsetarkoituksena, suorastaan pakkomielteenä. Tehostuminen jollakin erikoisalalla ei kysy, säilyykö kokonaisuuden mielekkyys. Jokaisen teknisen muutoksen kohdalla meidän tulisi ensin kysyä, miten muutos palvelee kokonaisuuden mielekkyyttä ja eloisuutta, ja sitä ykseyttä, mistä mielekkyys ja eloisuus nousee. Jos kysymystä ei esitetä, muuttuu erikoisalan tekninen tehostaminen itsetarkoitukseksi, ja kokonaisuuden mielekkyys vaarantuu. Tämä kysymys on esitettävä myös uuden »vihreän tekniikan» kohdalla. Kysymys on itse asiassa ikivanha ja esiintyy jo ainakin vanhassa taolaisessa kirjallisuudessa. Ympäristöajattelussa – paremmin: luontoajattelussa – ei siis oikeastaan ole kyse luonnonsuojelusta, vaan siinä etsitään elämänmuotoa, missä ihmisen kokemus ei koteloidu irti lähiluonnosta ja siten vaaranna sitä. Luonnonsuojelu on hätätoimenpide ja toteutuu tuhon aiheuttajan ehdoilla. Luontoajattelu etsii elämänmuotoa, missä ei synny tilaisuutta ja tarvetta (kyynisesti: missä ihminen ei pysty) luonnon kohtuuttomaan hyödyntämiseen ja kuormittamiseen, ja missä kysymystä luonnon suojelemisesta ei edes synny. Jos luontoa on suojeltava, on ajattelu jo teknistynyt, kokemus koteloitunut ja kokemuksen eloisuus menetetty.”

“Modernism had two great wishes. It wanted its audience to be led toward a recognition of the social reality of the sign (away from the comforts of narrative and illusionism, was the claim); but equally it dreamed of turning the sign back to a bedrock of World/Nature/Sensation/Subjectivity which the to and fro of capitalism had all but destroyed.”

“Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe. And all early modernism is actually from out of Europe, when you think of cubism is African, is looking at Africa, Matisse is looking at the arabesque, Oceania. Europe was the optical projection that had become photography, that had become film, that became television and it conquered the world.”

“Modernism isn't a design ethos any more, it's an economy of scale, and a marketing tool to sell the ordinary as something special, the sexless as erotic. A technological device without a specific, personalized identity has a subtext: it asserts the value of instrumentality. Its design is a reflection of its role... The anonymity of these objects is part of what they are: interchangeable commodities whose uniqueness in so far as they possess any is created by what is done with them. Function is an identity. And that identity is something we are encouraged to incorporate into our perception of self, that anonymity is proposed as something to emulate. Whimsy and uniqueness are indulgences.”

“Modernism, philosophically speaking, is in a sense the ‘‘worship’’ of time and the transient, a kind of deification of time and becoming and all that flows in the temporal order. That is why it resulted quickly in historicism and evolutionism and the theories all of those 19th-century philosophers such as Hegel and Marx and scientists such as Darwin. Such people are very different from one point of view, but they all in a sense divinize history even if Marx rejected the category of ‘‘divine.’’ The historical process is the reality that is domi- nant in modern thought. It is that which determines values and even real- ity today in the dominant Western paradigm.”

“Modernism really started with people getting infatuated with the idea of "it's the twentieth century, is this suitable for the twentieth century." This happened before the First World War and it wasn't just the soldiers. You can see it happening if you read the Bloomsbury biographies. It was a reaction to a great extent against Victorianism. There was so much that was repressive and stuffy. Victorian buildings were associated with it, and they were regarded as very ugly. Even when they weren't ugly, people made them ugly. They were painted hideously.”

“Modernism was a big thing for me, coming from a father who was very interested in art, music and culture - and almost always Italian art, music and culture. One good thing about Italians is that culture is part of everyday life. But Modernism is a movement of the past. The idea of a Modernist building as a sculpture set on a pedestal of grass is a part of Modernism that I'm not so crazy about.”

“Modernite öncesi zamanlarda şiddet her yerde hazır ve nazırdır, gündelik hayatın bir parçasıdır ve alenidir. Toplumsal pratiğin ve iletişimin önemli bir parçasıdır hatta. Onun için yalnız fiilen uygulannakla kalınmaz, seyirlik hâle de getirilir. Hükümdar iktidarını öldürme fiili üzerinden, kan dökmek vasıtasıyla ilan eder. Kamusal alanlarda sahnelenen kanlı seyirlikler, iktidarını ve haşmetini kurgulamak içindir. Şiddet ve şiddetin teatral sahnelenişi burada iktidarın ve hegemonyanın önemli bir parçasıdır.”

“Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

“Modernity is a desert, and we are jungle monkeys. And so new evolutionary selective pressures are coming to bear upon the human situation, new ideas are coming to the fore. Psilocybin is a selective filter for this. The wish to go to space is a selective filter for this. Just the wish to know your own mind is a selective filter for this.”

“Modernity is the ensemble of changes - intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural, technological, aesthetic - that have altered the world drastically since roughly the 17th century, until which time the world was, in the above respects, far less different from the world of any previous epoch of recorded history than it is from the world of today. The modern predicament is the set of problems these changes have bequeathed us.”

“Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it - life begins in slime and ends in intelligence - whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins put the matter: We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from apes. Everybody else take it for granted that they are descended from gods.”

“Modernity, though, is often surprisingly difficult to "locate." Certainly modernity cannot be defined as the surpassing of earlier forms of brutality. Perhaps it can be claimed that modernity should be equated with the possession of superior technology. But this response may itself reflect the modern fetishization of technology, which make it a magical solution for human problems.”